My Garmin Pilot 3 has been a trusted aid for 22 years and guided me throughout Europe, USA, Australia and NZ. It’s long overdue retirement but it’s still a useful backup.
I can elaborate on some Garmin Pilot 3 issues (my understanding and may not be 100% accurate):
The Garmin Pilot 3 accepts 4x AA 1.5V batteries the user can easily inserted.
t additionally has a 3 volt “coin cell” battery on the circuit board to maintain some of the memory. To access this you must unscrew the units casing. If it goes flat you lose what data was in that memory such as user way points and GPS almanac data – effectively a “factory reset occurs”. I think the battery may be rechargeable and probably normally trickle-charges when the 4x AA batteries or external power if connected.
My experience was that I stored the device without the 4x AA batteries inserted for 2 years and when I recently went to use it again, the internal 3V memory battery was flat. The display said something like “factory reset...”. I left it a while switched off with the batteries in, which seems to have charged the memory battery as it now holds memory even with the AA batteries removed. I also charged it via a car charger for 10 hours to make sure it was topped up.
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Note: This section about the battery replacement is I think now not relevant to the Garmin Pilot 3 as it is refers to the Garmin Street Pilot which is more like the Garmin 295 in size. I have not tried changing the internal battery on my Garmin Pilot 3 so can not confirm this section.
I saw on one web site for Garmin Street Pilot that the memory battery is known to die ie give up charging. In this case, I understand you can get a replacement battery but for a direct swap you need to get the specific battery (Pansonic LV-1220/VCN with vertical solderable contacts already fitted). To fit this will requires opening up the device and some electrical soldering skills. You might find a repairer of mobile phones will do this for you. You will not get the battery in a normal hardware store. RS Australia appears to sell the battery for $8, see:
VL1220-VCN | Panasonic 3V, VL1220 Lithium Vanadium Pentoxide Rechargeable Coin Cell Battery, PCB Pin Terminal, 7mAh | Panasonic
There’s some relevant text and photos here regarding changing the battery:
Memory battery in Garmin GPS III - Page 2 - GPS Review Forums
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Having restarted the device, I left it for an hour for the GPS to relocate its self. It seemed to do this ok and give the expected location and time. However the date was clearly wrong, some day in 1997 when it should have been 2016. The device was in my opinion safe to use with the wrong date showing as I suspected Garmin had a Year 2000 software issue. Searching on line I found reference to an old Garmin “End of Week” issue causing wrong date display and a Garmin update file that would fix it. Fortunately I have a data cable for the Garmin 3 and was able to easily download the Garmin fix and its simple to run. After starting the device and leaving it for 30 minutes to relocate, the date became corrected.
The software fix is here:
https://sites.google.com/site/gnbadd...C_Software.zip
If you don’t have the data cable, then I did see that they are still available on Amazon with a DB9 or USB plug. Also available is a Garmin plug with bare end wires. I thought the car charger lead might have all four wires in the cable to enable me to cut off the charger plug end and soldering on a DB9 plug but I have tried this and found it only had 2 wires for the power. Plug wiring details for the special Garmin are on the web at.
http://www8.garmin.com/specs/pcwiring.pdf.
I’m sure most people will say “why bother, move on”, but here’s the info in case it’s of use.